Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Perspective
  • Published:

Can foodporn prime healthy eating? Thinking beyond digital gazing and satiety

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 76, pages 1493–1496 (2022)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

The uprise of digital media has bypassed the language and cultural barriers of communicating about food with peers. Sharing exaggeratively glamourized food visuals with fancy hashtags and folksonomy, generally termed as Foodporn, is “trendy”. Exposure to Foodporn affects food choices, directly or indirectly, through psychological, physiological and psychosocial means. Though unhealthy connotation is often attributed to foodporn, this perspective article implores that the plausible potential to alluring food pictures to prompt healthy food choices, be explored. Can foodporn be effectively used for e-priming (electronically priming) healthy food choices by glamourizing and idealizing healthy foods?

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Illustration of the pathways of the physiological, psychological and psychosocial impact of Foodporn on food choices.
Fig. 2: Future implication of using healthy foodporn for e-priming positive food choices Vs the current understanding of negative connotation and impacts of foodporn.

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.

References

  1. McBride AE. Foodporn. Gastronomica. 2010;10:38–46.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Peng Y, Jemmott JB III. Feast for the eyes: effects of food perceptions and computer vision features on food photo popularity. Int J Commun. 2018;12:313–36.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Yan J, Corino G. Digital foraging: how social media is changing our relationship with food and nutrition?. Digit Cult Sci J Digital Cult. 2019;4:39–46.

    Google Scholar 

  4. #foodporn. https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/foodporn/. Accessed Jan 2022.

  5. Spence C, Okajima K, Cheok AD, Petit O, Michel C. Eating with our eyes: from visual hunger to digital satiation. Brain Cogn. 2016;110:53–63.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Mann A. Beyond the hashtag. In: Leer J, Krogager SGS (Eds). Research methods in digital food studies. 1st ed. Routledge, London, UK, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003010845. Accessed Feb 2022.

  7. Jin SV. Interactive effects of Instagram foodies’ Hashtagged #Foodporn and peer users’ eating disorder on eating intention, envy, parasocial interaction, and online friendship. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw. 2017;21:157–67.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Giles P, Donald PE. Virtual Americas: transnational fictions and the transatlantic imaginary. Duke University Press, 2002.

  9. Mejova Y, Abbar S, Haddadi H. Fetishizing food in digital age: # foodporn around the world. In Proceedings of the tenth international AAAI conference on web and social media. 2016.

  10. Puraikalan Y. Obesity: perceptions of body image and obesity among cross culture: a review. Obes Res Open J. 2018;5:1–4.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Turner PG, Lefevre CE. Instagram use is linked to increased symptoms of orthorexia nervosa. Eat Weight Disord. 2017;22:277–84.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  12. Gonçalves JDA, Moreira EA, Trindade EB, Fiates GM. Eating disorders in childhood and adolescence. Rev Paul Pediatr. 2013;31:96–103.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Gavaravarapu SR, Konapur A. Media and marketing: Iniquitous influence on children’s diets. In: Puri S (Ed). Children in India: opportunities and challenges (Ed). 1st ed. Nova Science Publishers, Inc., New York, USA, 2021. https://doi.org/10.52305/RGWU1645 Accessed 4 Feb 2022.

  14. Upadhyah AA, Misra R, Parcwani DN, Maheira PB. Prevalence and risk factors for eating disorders in Indian adolescent females. Nat J Phys Pharm Pharm. 2014;4:153–7.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Gupta A, Osadchiy V, Mayer EA. Brain–gut–microbiome interactions in obesity and food addiction. Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2020;17:655–72.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  16. Spielvogel I, Matthes J, Naderer B, Karsay K. A treat for the eyes. An eye-tracking study on children’s attention to unhealthy and healthy food cues in media content. Appetite. 2018;125:63–71.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  17. Blechert J, Meule A, Busch NA, Ohla K. Food-pics: an image database for experimental research on eating and appetite. Front Psychol. 2014;5:617.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  18. Toma CL. Effects of Facebook self-presentation on emotional well-being. In: Reinecke L and Oliver BM (Eds). The Routledge handbook of media use and well-being: international perspectives on theory and research on positive media effects. 1st ed. Routledge, London, UK, 2020.

  19. Alloway TP, Alloway RG. The impact of engagement with social networking sites (SNSs) on cognitive skills. Comput Hum Behav. 2012;28:1748–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Vaterlaus JM, Patten EV, Roche C, Young JA. # GettingHealthy: the perceived influence of social media on young adult health behaviors. Comput Hum Behav. 2015;45:151–7.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Seppänen J. The power of the gaze: an introduction to visual literacy. Peter Lang publishing Inc. 2006.

  22. Neiger BL, Thackeray R, Van-Wagenen SA, Hanson CL, West JH, Barnes MD, et al. Use of social media in health promotion: purposes, key performance indicators, and evaluation metrics. Health Promot Pract. 2012;13:159–64.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  23. Hawkins LK, Farrow C, Thomas JM. Do perceived norms of social media users’ eating habits and preferences predict our own food consumption and BMI? Appetite. 2020;149:104611 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2020.104611

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  24. Islam SM, Tabassum R, Liu Y, Chen S, Redfern J, Kim SY, et al. The role of social media in preventing and managing non-communicable diseases in low-and-middle income countries: hope or hype? Health Policy Technol. 2019;8:96–101.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Pilar L, Kvasnickova Stanislavska L, Kvasnicka R. Healthy food on the Twitter social network: Vegan, homemade, and organic Food. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021;18:3815 https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18073815

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  26. Esther KP. Health goal priming as a situated intervention tool: how to benefit from nonconscious motivational routes to health behaviour. Health Psychol Rev. 2016;10:408–24.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Samson L, Buijzen M. Craving healthy foods? How sensory appeals increase appetitive motivational processing of healthy foods in adolescents. Media Psychol. 2020;23:159–83. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2019.1584569

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Forwood SE, Ahern AL, Hollands GJ, YinLam NG, Marteau TM. Priming healthy eating. You can’t prime all people all time. Appetite. 2015;89:93–102.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  29. Kemp S. Digital 2021: global overview report. https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2021-global-overview-report . Accessed Oct 2021.

  30. The World Bank. Individuals using the Internet (% of population)—low & middle income. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.ZS?end=2017&locations=XO&start=2017&type=shaded&view=map&year=2017. Accessed Oct 2021.

  31. McNally J, Hugh-Jones S, Caton S, Vereijken C, Weenen H, Hetherington MM. The eyes have it: infant gaze as an indicator of hunger and satiation. Appetite. 2019;133:353–61.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  32. Andersen T, Byrne DV, Wang QJ. How digital food affects our analog lives: the impact of food photography on healthy eating behavior. Front Psychol. 2021. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.634261

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nutrition Information, Communication and Health Education (NICHE) Division, ICMR-National Institute of Nutrition (ICMR-NIN), Hyderabad, India

    Ananya Seal, SubbaRao M. Gavaravarapu & Archana Konapur

Authors
  1. Ananya Seal
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. SubbaRao M. Gavaravarapu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Archana Konapur
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

AS reviewed literature, executed the work and contributed to manuscript preparation; SRMG conceived the study, supervised and critically reviewed the manuscript; AK contributed to review of literature, manuscript revisions, and preparation of figures.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to SubbaRao M. Gavaravarapu.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Seal, A., Gavaravarapu, S.M. & Konapur, A. Can foodporn prime healthy eating? Thinking beyond digital gazing and satiety. Eur J Clin Nutr 76, 1493–1496 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41430-022-01139-w

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41430-022-01139-w

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links